Statuses

You might be surprised to learn that you are leading a programmed life. You can build a business, achieve financial success, become famous and still be miserable. Celebrity suicides prove the point over and over again.

The outside stuff doesn’t make us happy. Lack of basic needs can make us unhappy, but beyond that, we are programmed to believe that happiness will come with achievement of the next goal – the new car, the bigger home, etc.

You can recognize and correct your programming.

You can choose to allow your previous programming to continue or you can change the programs. It all starts by learning that you are programmed and watching your mind to control the programs.

When you were born, you couldn’t even operate your body. Eventually, you learned to sit, crawl, then walk. Remember learning to tie your shoes? You started as an unconscious incompetent. You didn’t know that you didn’t know how to tie your shoes.

Then you became a conscious incompetent. You realized that you didn’t know how to tie your shoes.

Next, with attention you learned to tie your shoes. You became a conscious competent. Being competent at tying your shoes required your conscious effort.

The top stage is unconscious competent. You can tie your shoes without thinking. You have programmed your brain to tie your shoes without your conscious effort.

Tying your shoes is an example of programming your body to accomplish a task. Education is a process of programming the brain to accomplish other tasks – reading, writing and arithmetic are the classic examples.

However you have also been programmed in other ways. Your prejudices, morals, what you believe you should do with your life, have all been programmed in your brain.

The programs are often triggered by something in your environment. Someone says something and BANG there goes your program. You see someone and BANG there is a judgement.

The good news is that you can take control. Pay attention to your mind and take control of your programming. At times it isn’t easy, but the rewards are well worth the effort.